Columns
Explore Daily Inter Lake Columns featuring local sports commentary, outdoor adventure stories, lifestyle tips, and community perspectives from Northwest Montana.
Giving Together: Turning Tax Season into Opportunities for Students
On a spring morning in Kalispell, a group of elementary students huddle around a table, testing a small robot they…
Giving Together: Celebrating nonprofit impact
One of my favorite events is our spring Community Grant Awards celebration that benefits local nonprofits.
Spring is gopher season
For the outdoors person, springtime is here and rapidly moving forward towards summer.
Hard work makes for good music
Last fall a visitor came to see the Northwest Montana History Museum’s new exhibit on logging and related industries, then offered to play us a soundtrack.
Full Count: Troy softball -- Driven to new heights
The coach drives the bus, the third baseman throws lefthanded and the first baseman has only been hanging around the diamond for three seasons.
Full Count: A breakaway roper and her horse
When her horse, Monty, reared back in the breakaway roping box and pinned Anna Tretter to the back wall, the needle swung to “big mistake.”
Noon shore lunches
Boy, I am hungry for a good meal of deep fat fried fish filets.
Not so fast with the 'swan song'
Before I heard wildlife biologist Dale Becker’s talk, all I knew about trumpeter swans came from an East Coast writer who had never seen one.
Full Count: Things continue looking up for Phelps
Jack Phelps’ time through the 200 meters at the Iceberg Invitational on April 17 was 22.57 seconds, which tells you that the Columbia Falls sprinter can fly.
Giving Together: Maximize your Impact
Last year a donor from Bigfork who had just sold his long-time Flathead Valley business and property walked into my office. He wanted to give back to the valley where he has lived and worked for the past 45 years.
Montana values, transcribed
People want all the freedom they can get.
Hunting regs are getting more complex
Many hunters like fall as their favorite time of the year because of the hunting season.
Full Count: I am here not to bury Donovan
On Nov. 25, 1985 a youngish reporter, in his Monday duties writing about Griz football for the Montana Kaimin student newspaper, traipsed into Larry Donovan’s office.
Full Count: Is there an O-lineman in the house
Dillon Botner felt he had a good reason to step away from football after a senior season in which he made three starts on the offensive line: Med school.
Nonprofits bank on doing good
In 2023, the state's nonprofits paid out more than $3.6 billion in wages, accounting for 12.6% of all wages paid statewide.
Unnecessary boat tax
My old friend George Ostrom, one of Montana’s best-known newsmen, liked to say, “No man’s life or liberty is safe when the Montan Legislature is in session.” A proposed new tax on Montana boat owners seems to meet …